3 ways we're helping the environment & 3 things we are improving

Happy World Environment Day 2018! This year is bigger and better than ever, as more and more people are getting involved and better educated on what we need to improve upon to ensure a healthy and sustainable future for our planet. As sustainability is at the core of our business, we are using today to consider opportunities for us to make our business even more sustainable, whilst also celebrating the achievements we have already made in working towards our goal:

To lead change within the fitness industry to make sustainable thinking the standard, not the exception.

We believe that the only way we can make the future better is by working together, so we welcome feedback at every opportunity; if you have any suggestions on how we can improve, we’d love to hear from you!

3 things we have achieved already:

Zero waste:

At ground-level, we have a zero-waste policy in our office. We keep a tiny jar in the corner for anything that has to go to landfill and we empty it on very rare occasions that it has anything in it! In terms of our products, our mats are made from recycled materials and all of our packaging is either recyclable and/or biodegradable.

Carbon-negative:

We support an awesome charity called SolarAid (you can read more about them here) which helps us to ensure that we are actively reducing our carbon-footprint. We offset all carbon produced during production and transportation of our products, and more, so that we are not just carbon-neutral, but carbon-negative.

Water-based inks:

All of our mat designs are printed using water-based inks only. Water based inks ensure that our mats are non-toxic, lead-free and therefore safe for children and grown-ups alike. They also do not contain any chemicals that can harm your health, or the health of the environment, such as ozone-depleting chemicals like CFC’s and HCFC’s, aromatic hydrocarbons or volatile solvents. The manufacture and disposal of water-based inks also has a far smaller negative impact on the environment than other ink options.

3 things we aim to improve in the next few months:

Packaging:

We are constantly trying to find ways that we can safely transport our products to our customers, whilst minimising the packaging we use. At the start of the year we switched from packaging our round mats in tubes, which were then sent within outer boxes, to simply sending in the cardboard tubes alone. We did this by investing in ultra-strong, biodegradable tape to seal them. All our packaging can be used as a storage container for your mat between use.

An element of the packaging that we are still looking for a more suitable solution for is the plastic film that protects the mat during transportation. Although this can be recycled at the end of it’s journey, we would prefer to use a biodegradable, vegetable-based plastic replacement. So this is something we are looking into this year.

Efficient transportation of our products to our customers:

As a start-up we currently only have one, central, distribution centre in the U.K. However, we ship our mats all over the world. In order to be more efficient, our vision would be to have distribution centres in countries all over the world, in order to minimise how far our products have to travel before they reach your doorstep. As we become more established within the fitness industry, we hope that this will become a viable option for us.

Mode of transport:

In order to improve the transportation of our products, we aim to use only electric vehicles. As more haulage firms begin to offer electric-only shipping options, we will prioritise this over conventional fossil-fuel transportation.

Although we are celebrating our environmental wins today, we know we can always improve our business to ensure that we are as sustainable as possible and we hope that we can inspire other brands to do the same.